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Money Monster

The Money Monster is a situation in search of a movie — and, I’m afraid, it’s a search conducted in vain.

The movie’s premise is known to anyone who’s seen the trailer. A blustering cable TV financial maven is taken hostage while doing his show. The gunman, who takes over a studio at the fictional FNN network, straps a bomb-containing vest to TV loud mouth Lee Gates before voicing what the movie seems to view as a legitimate grievance.

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Robert Denerstein

For 27 years, Robert Denerstein was the film critic at The Rocky Mountain News. Read more of Robert's reviews at Denerstein Unleashed.

The aggrieved gunman lost his life savings because he acted on a supposedly solid stock tip Gates gave his gullible audience.

When the stock tanks, the gunman decides that the system — i.e., just about everything — is rigged. He wants answers.

Well, here’s one. A movie that’s trying, among other things, to expose a lack of credibility in our brazen 24/7 media ought to be far more credible itself.

The Money Monster flirts with thriller and satirical elements without providing enough of either, and despite the presence of appealing stars George Clooney (as Gates) and Julia Roberts (as Patty Fenn, his producer), the movie short sells character development.

Gates is a self-congratulatory on-air clown whose show traffics in noisy gimmicks. Patty is all business, the savvy woman who presides over the TV circus in which Gates performs.

Clooney gives Gates the brash presence of an unashamed showman; Gates likes to don a gold top hat and open his business report with a song-and-dance number. Roberts’ character speaks to Gates through an earpiece while he’s being held hostage. She tries to keep him from making a fatal mistake.

The gunman (Jack O’Connell) becomes the movie’s slightly demented everyman, a $14-and-hour delivery guy who has a girlfriend and a kid on the way. He sees no future for himself. He doesn’t want his $60,000 investment back; he wants answers.

It’s not always wise to judge a movie by its predecessors, but The Money Monster evokes memories of far better entertainments — Network, Dog Day Afternoon and The Big Short among them.

The movie’s less-than-suspenseful plot hinges on complicated business shenanigans involving Ibis Clear Capital, a financial company that claims that its rocketing stock — the one Gates boldly recommended — tanked because of a computer glitch, thereby losing a total of $800 million for its stockholders.

Credit the movie with introducing — or at least popularizing — a bit of jargon. Algorithms are referred to as “algos,” and the guy who invented the algorithm that governs Ibis’ dealings is called a “quant,” as in “quantitative analyst.”

I left the theater happy to know that I’ll now be able to address all my problems by asking anyone who’ll listen to help me “find the quant.”

You may not be able to take your eyes off Clooney and Roberts, but their magnetism mostly is wasted on a screenplay that dares to take place in real time, but seldom bothers to make what happens during that time seem believably real.